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Started By
Message
To Pimp a Butterfly is going to be one of the all time classics
Posted on 3/20/15 at 8:41 am
Posted on 3/20/15 at 8:41 am
This album is just absolutely amazing. At first it won't hit you as good. But keep listening to it. After getting used to this style, it's very great. u is a song that'll change up on you and it's so genius it could be looked at as stupid. King Kunta will make you want to get up and dance. There's just so many great songs. That is all.
12
Posted on 3/20/15 at 8:45 am to Johnathan Gotti
Gucci > Kendrick
Posted on 3/20/15 at 9:15 am to Johnathan Gotti
People either love or hate this album so far it seems like. I still have yet to listen to the whole thing.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 9:25 am to Johnathan Gotti
"Classic" is used so damn loosely.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 9:53 am to Johnathan Gotti
I like it, but its just..... For a Kendrick Lamar album there doesn't seem like there is a lot of Kendrick Lamar. There is a lot of everything else.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 10:00 am to Meursault
quote:
I like it, but its just..... For a Kendrick Lamar album there doesn't seem like there is a lot of Kendrick Lamar. There is a lot of everything else.
I kind of agree with this. Kendrick is so freaking versatile and can do all of these different personas and styles... but it's sometimes at the expense of him having his own, signature flow.
As for people who think that rap is mindless or stupid... they should jump into the genius.com wormhole for this album. I'm not sure I've ever seen so much text devoted to analyzing an album this quickly. It's crazy... and it gives a glimpse of the complexity of this album.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 10:43 am to Johnathan Gotti
quote:
To Pimp a Butterfly is going to be one of the all time classics
Posted on 3/20/15 at 10:52 am to hogfly
quote:
I'm not sure I've ever seen so much text devoted to analyzing an album this quickly. It's crazy... and it gives a glimpse of the complexity of this album.
Good lord
Posted on 3/20/15 at 10:56 am to Srbtiger06
quote:
Good lord
You want a taste?
quote:
To Pimp a Butterfly Album
“To Pimp a Butterfly” the third album and second major label album of the critically acclaimed artist Kendrick Lamar (age 27). The follow up to the critically acclaimed “good kid, m.A.A.d city” is a play on “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. Harper Lee explains story of an innocent caucasian girl who sees racial injustice when an african american is unjustly blamed for rape. The caucasian girl represents Harper Lee who as a little girl saw injustice in her community as she grew up. “To Pimp a Butterfly" is about kendrick seeing racial injustice and the worst, black on black crime. “To Pimp a Butterfly” like “To Kill a Mockingbird” is about the killing of a person’s innocence. A Mockingbird is a harmless creature and the protagonist’s, of Harper Lee’s book, father tells his daughter killing a mockingbird is evil since it never harms you. The Butterfly represents African American people in Kendrick’s album. The cover even incorporates a young boy on the bottom left who looks like Kunta the protagonist for book and tv series “The Roots’ also the top right cornor has a monkey with a crown, a judge with two X’s on his eyes, and finally kendrick in the center holding a white baby right outside the white house. The album is sonically different than all his albums. With many elements of black music the album incorporates jazz, funk, spoken word poetry, etc. With production by Dr. Dre(exec), Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith(exec.), Boi-1da,Flying Lotus, Pharrell, Terrace Martin, Tae Beast, Thundercat, Lawrence Dopson, Rahki, Sounwave, Willie B, LOZ, Dave Free. The Album is incredibly dark and naked. Exposing many opinions of Kendrick on himself and how his newfound fame can be used and how it depresses him by how it tries to change him and is destroying his innocent thoughts on how to live his life and his music. Also depressed on how the world is still so unsettling and needs still so much help and needs many leading figures, like of the past, Nelson Mandela when he talk about “the ghost of Mandela” on “Mortal Man” the last track of the album. Even includes some protective words of Michael Jackson by referencing “Bilie Jean”. The album has references to albums “Section 80” and “good kid, m.A.A.d city” The very awarding album shows an incredible cohesive theme and each song has something that will transition to a message on the next track. Songs like track #3,5,7,9 all have poems that lead up to track #10 into a perfect message. The album is a journey of Kendrick that is outside of compton with all these newfound influence and how he’s lost, but finds his way back home and realizes what he has to do his his life and newfound voice that is the voice of a new generation. Addition to that is an interview of kendrick with Tupac maybe referencing to Kendrick’s Dream he had about Pac and how Pac told Kendrick to save Hip-Hop. Black empowerment and blacks ignorant ways needing to be corrected is shown as a message by K-Dot. Kendrick leaves with a great poem that he made for Pac and leaves us with a caterpillar which becomes and butterfly to escape the m.A.A.d city.
Track 1 — “Wesley’s Theory” is the first track which references Wesley Snipe and how he was a true hip hop artist but becomes pimped out by the industry, and his talent and true goals in his music career gets destroyed by his fame that he gains and tries to maintain. With even Dr. Dre speaking on gaining fame is easy but keeping it is difficult. Using a sample by Boris Gardiner “Every **** is a star” This track has a great intro that leads to a different beat. Produced by Flying Lotus, Ronald Colson, Sounwave, and Thundercat. With Flying Lotus’s experimental electronic Hip-Hop influence. The “Bo-ing” noise that is so infectious and catchy makes you feel like getting sucked into the album. George Clinton speaks when the beat drops symbolizing a cocoon as a room and saying the canon is caving in. Kendrick uses his very versatile flow which changes about 3 times to perfection on the production of this track. He uses the message of the first track of “good kid, m.A.A.d city” and uses it on the first track of this album. In the previous album on the first track he explains how he first idolized Sherane and will love and admire her until he loses his virginity to her and realized he can just use Sherane now. This is referenced here but instead of Sherane he talks about Fame and Hip-Hop and how he first idolized it and wanted it but now that he achieved it can he use this platform for positive instead of just thinking of fame and hiphop as Sherane something that can just be used whenever he wants. But he realizes no he will use hip-hop not as a means for money and luxury for his lifestyle but will enrich the tradition of Hip-Hop with positive Classic music. He ends the song with saying “Tax man comin” referencing Wesley Snipes Tax Fraud and how he tried to escape charges by using what US government calls “tax protestor theory” which is saying you don’t pay taxes for political argument against the government. Which is a great lead to Track 2 “For Free? (Interlude)” since you think living in freedom is free but you get taxed. Aggressive with a smooth flow
Posted on 3/20/15 at 11:04 am to GreatLakesTiger24
quote:
Gucci > Kendrick
Posted on 3/20/15 at 11:14 am to hogfly
quote:
As for people who think that rap is mindless or stupid...
Don't even bother. When they think of rap music all they envision is some hood rat blaring loud bass sounds out of his beat up car with rims worth more than the car itself. They refuse to see that some rappers put real poetry and emotion into their lyrics.
It's the same kind of ignorance as the folks who think all country music nowadays is about trucks and beer.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 11:17 am to Superior Pariah
quote:
Don't even bother. When they think of rap music all they envision is some hood rat blaring loud bass sounds out of his beat up car with rims worth more than the car itself. They refuse to see that some rappers put real poetry and emotion into their lyrics.
It's the same kind of ignorance as the folks who think all country music nowadays is about trucks and beer.
Yeah. No offense to them all, but I have a Masters in English Literature (which isn't good for much). Good rap is like long form poetry. It's absolutely packed with allusions and layers of meaning.
There's a reason that genius.com started off as rapgenius.com but now has expanded into literature as well. I had my students read Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" on genius the other day, which was really cool.
This post was edited on 3/20/15 at 11:19 am
Posted on 3/20/15 at 11:58 am to Johnathan Gotti
I respect Kendrick and the lyricism he brings, but man I just do not like this album. IMO Good kid Maad City is so much better and not even close.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 12:04 pm to hogfly
quote:
genius.com wormhole for this album
Good lord, that is worse than some of the shite Pfork spews in their reviews.
I agree with you on Kendrick though. I listened to it again this morning, and it is a great listen. It is not what I was expecting, and I think that's a good thing!
quote:
As for people who think that rap is mindless or stupid
There is another side too. Most of my friends who listen to rap are not digging this album at all. But they also didn't like RTJ2.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 12:10 pm to Meursault
quote:
There is another side too. Most of my friends who listen to rap are not digging this album at all. But they also didn't like RTJ2.
It's definitely more on the backpacker/intellectual side of things, but that's always been my flavor of rap. I can get down on some dumbass, ignorant banger tracks (Bobby Shmurda, etc..), but I prefer stuff with thought to it.
Anyway, I'm not sure that I'll listen to this album over and over and over like I did both RTJs, but I appreciate it. I've definitely liked it more on the third run through (with genius open) than I did on the others (while I was working out).
A lot of my hip hop listening is while working out these days, and this isn't really a workout album, unfortunately.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 12:49 pm to hogfly
quote:
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from music critics, the album has received an average score of 95, indicating "universal acclaim", based on 20 reviews.[28] As of March 20, 2015 the album was the highest scoring album of the year on metacritic, both in terms of metascore and user score.[40] Additionally, the album's score of a 95 ties it with OutKast's Stankonia as the highest rated rap album on the entire website and is tied for 8th all time amongst all albums.[41]
Posted on 3/20/15 at 1:05 pm to hogfly
quote:
Yeah. No offense to them all, but I have a Masters in English Literature (which isn't good for much). Good rap is like long form poetry. It's absolutely packed with allusions and layers of meaning.
There's a reason that genius.com started off as rapgenius.com but now has expanded into literature as well. I had my students read Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" on genius the other day, which was really cool.
I respect and like rappers like Kendrick, but as a whole I don't respect rap near as much as a genre as I do something like Blues, rock, etc. and I'm not talking about shitty rock on the radio. Rap is just a lot easier to produce than any other genre from a musical standpoint. Its why a rapper can come out with an album and a new mix tape EVERY YEAR basically. The rappers I like; Kendrick, Lupe, Kid Cudi, Run The Jewels, and a handful of others I appreciate the lyrics. But the music is nothing complex; its samples. I make beats all the time. Not on the level of this, but definitely usable, and they might take me an hour to do. Recording artists like Jack White, Sturgill Simpson, The War on Drugs (latest album took forever to complete), St. Paul and the Broken Bones, etc. I have more respect for the value of the music. Its much harder to make what they do sound right as opposed to rap. It's not a computer making their music, they are. It takes skill to compose rap tracks, but being someone that is a blues musician and records rap beats for the hell of it; its much easier to make the rap beats sound right. Rap can absolutely be poetic, but musically it doesn't do much for me.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 1:21 pm to CocoLoco
I don't disagree with you at all. I love all kinds of music (literally, I'm freaking schizophrenic in my listening). I do think that some rap producers are geniuses in how much they know and appreciate music as well as their ability to construct ear worms, but I definitely appreciate the musicianship of people who play instruments more.
I do think I have a tendency to sometimes give producers too much credit, though. I always think that Kanye West has some super deep knowledge of the totality of music that allows him to find and use these cool arse samples that he does... then I saw that article with A-Trak where he said that Kanye didn't even know who Daft Punk was until he introduced him to them. So hell.... someone else may have turned West onto the King Crimson sample and all his others as well.
That being said, there are producers and DJs out there who DO have an encyclopedic knowledge of music (Questlove for example) from digging through crates and crates of old records and studying it like a freaking ethnomusicologist.
I do think I have a tendency to sometimes give producers too much credit, though. I always think that Kanye West has some super deep knowledge of the totality of music that allows him to find and use these cool arse samples that he does... then I saw that article with A-Trak where he said that Kanye didn't even know who Daft Punk was until he introduced him to them. So hell.... someone else may have turned West onto the King Crimson sample and all his others as well.
That being said, there are producers and DJs out there who DO have an encyclopedic knowledge of music (Questlove for example) from digging through crates and crates of old records and studying it like a freaking ethnomusicologist.
Posted on 3/20/15 at 2:09 pm to CocoLoco
While I don't necessarily disagree that playing the saxophone is more difficult than composing a beat, I think you are under selling a producers, let's say Dre or premo, knowledge of music. You can appreciate the music qualities of jazz and rock, but I will always appreciate the actual writing of hip hop songs more so than stuff like rock songs. Mainly because not only do they have to deal with being judged about what the songs message is, they (the rapper) is also judged on how creative they can be with rhyming
This post was edited on 3/20/15 at 2:11 pm
Posted on 3/20/15 at 2:15 pm to CocoLoco
quote:
CocoLoco
That's because the standard for rap is so low.
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